


Signed Up

by Rakefetzyz



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakefetzyz/pseuds/Rakefetzyz
Summary: Foggy signed up for a lot when he became Matt's bestie.  But he never signed up to play sidekick for a long underwear guy.





	Signed Up

Foggy never signed up for this.

He never signed up to play sidekick for a long underwear guy. Especially not a long underwear guy whose only superpowers were sensory. No super strength, no invulnerability, no special recuperation powers to make his wounds heal faster. Especially not a long underwear guy whose antics were certain to get him killed one day.

Foggy signed up for a lot of things once he and Matt progressed from law school roommates to friends.

He signed up to be sighted guide for the first blind person he ever really got to know. 

At first he felt sorry for his roommate. Blindness seemed so terrible, like being lost in perpetual darkness. 

Matt soon taught him otherwise. Matt was so capable and so adamant that no one pity him. But he did appreciate a sighted guide sometimes. 

Foggy’s instinct was to grab Matt's arm and drag him along. Matt showed Foggy how to let him take his elbow instead. Before he knew it, it became second nature to lead Matt around campus, to describe scenery and co-eds, to read out signs and notices and to mention people's gestures. Blindness became just another part of Matt, a part that was less important than his brilliance in class or the way he always laughed or at least grimaced at Foggy's jokes.

Foggy signed up to be Matt's family when he found out that his buddy had no one at all since his father's death when Matt was ten.

He stopped pitying Matt's blindness pretty quickly. It was harder not to feel sorry for Matt being all alone in the world. As terrible as the idea of blindness had seemed, this was a thousand times worse. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to grow up without parents. Heck, even now as young adult, he wasn’t ready to face losing his mom or dad and their unconditional love. But if anything had happened to them when he was a kid, he knew that other members of the Nelson clan, his grandparents or an aunt and uncle, would have taken him in. The idea of having no one at all was unthinkable. 

Foggy signed up to make sure that Matt would never again feel that he had no one. He started including Matt in all the Nelson family vacation plans. When graduation day arrived, he made sure that the whole Nelson clan cheered for Matt as loudly as they did for Foggy. 

Yes, Foggy signed up for a lot when he became Matt's bestie. But he never signed up for sidekick. 

The night he found his best friend, all in black and masked, bleeding out on the floor of his apartment, Foggy felt as though the foundations of the world had shifted. It felt more earth shattering than the actual earthquake under Manhattan last week. 

It took time to get over his anger and to reorient himself to a new image of his friend. It took time to realize that he had not completely wasted his breath playing sighted guide. 

For all his special abilities, Matt was still blind. He needed to have signs and notices read out for him because he couldn't see them. And at least when he was tired or hurt, taking Foggy’s elbow saved the concentration and effort it took to sense his surroundings. 

More importantly, Matt was still alone in the world and more than ever in need of his best friend. And the friendship meant a lot to Foggy, too. 

When Matt packed his red suit away after Elektra died, Foggy stepped in to supply him with legal work, cases that would keep him too busy to miss his old night life. He gave Matt the kind of cases his friend loved, the kind that let him be a different kind of hero.

Foggy didn’t understand how it happened. It started with the earthquake and then rapidly got out of control. But he found himself sheltering at the police precinct while his buddie once again went off to battle the forces of evil. This time Matt had somehow found a group of long underwear friends to fight against the evil forces with him, evil forces who claimed they were planning to destroy New York City. 

He was sorry that Matt felt he needed to go do this again. But he knew his friend and he knew that Matt would not be Matt if he let his beloved city be harmed while he was capable of trying to stop it. 

Foggy also knew that Matt needed the suit to protect his identity. If he continued to go out fighting without it, Matt would be disbarred. Foggy realized that Matt loved his pro bono work, too. Getting disbarred would be devastating. 

He still had a key to Matt's apartment. Foggy let himself into the loft that had once been as familiar as his own apartment. He carefully opened the trunk and dug out Matt’s red suit. Then he packed it in an old gym bag and brought it back to the precinct. 

No, Foggy had never signed up to play sidekick. 

But Foggy had signed up to be Matt's family. And this was what family was for.


End file.
